Priya Jay Barbican/Iniva Curatorial Trainee

Stefania Valente Finance Assistant

Stefania supports the management of Iniva’s finances.

Iniva Volunteers & Placements Ongoing

The Iniva team is supported by the generous contribution of student placements, and volunteers within the Stuart Hall Library. Iniva relies on the help of library volunteers to support the record keeping and care of our collection, as well as the organisation and support of the library events programme. Student placements contribute significantly to ongoing projects and events including digital and social media development.

We are grateful to all our volunteers and placements that offer Iniva the chance to grow and be more ambitious.

Anita Bhalla Iniva Chair appointed in 2013

Anita Bhalla spent 26 years at the BBC, most recently as BBC Head of Public Space Broadcasting. In this role she has led the Big Screens project for the BBC during the Olympics; working with city councils, arts, education and community organisations. Anita has a varied and diverse media career presenting/producing on radio programmes for the Asian community in the West Midlands, being a correspondent and working as Head of Political and Community Affairs for England. Anita was also President of Circom, a European wide group of public service broadcasters.

With extensive leadership experience, Anita is the Chair of the Midlands Arts Centre, mac in Birmingham. During her time there the Board raised £15.8m for a redevelopment building project which was completed in 2010. She has recently been appointed as Chair of the Creative City Partnership for the Birmingham and Solihull LEP. Anita is also Trustee of the Symphony Hall and Town Hall in Birmingham and a Trustee of the Children’s University.

Anita Bhalla was awarded an OBE in 2009 for services to Broadcasting and communities.

Marc Nahum Member since 2009

Marc Nahum has worked in the Financial Services industry for over 25 years with a particular focus on the private equity sector.

Born in France, Marc holds an MBA from the Booth Business School of the University of Chicago and a Business Degree from ESSEC (France).

Somil Goyal Member since 2013

Somil Goyal was born & educated in India, and has lived & worked in six countries in Asia & Europe. His professional focus is business & economic growth through creative use of information technology. Working in banking and consulting, Somil has built high performance teams that constructively challenge the current state. Somil is a member of a number of visual arts institutions (including Chisenhale Art Place). He has a personal passion for arts, especially for its ability to bring people from diverse backgrounds together. Somil is a Mechanical Engineer with a Post Graduate Diploma in Management.

Ritula Shah Member since 2013

Having ignored her father’s advice to become a lawyer, Ritula graduated in History from Warwick University in 1988. Soon afterwards, she joined the Radio 4 production team based in Birmingham.
After a spell in regional TV news, she joined the Today programme. Seven years and many nightshifts later, Ritula made the short journey across London to Bush House and the BBC World Service — where she became one of the presenters of the daily news show The World Today. She found herself presenting the programme from a variety of unlikely locations, including a building site at the back of a mosque in Tehran and under a table on a rooftop in Moscow (the only place where the equipment was protected from the snow).
Ritula is now the main presenter of The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4, a daily news and current affairs programme. The main focus of The World Tonight is international affairs so Ritula regularly travels for work – in the past twelve months, she’s been to China, India, Iran, the US and much of Europe. Ritula has also a made a number of documentaries, writes a weekly newsletter and is an ambassador for the British Asian Trust. In 2011 she won Media Professional of the Year at the Asian Women of Achievement Awards and the GG2 Media Award in 2013.

Rodrigo Orrantia Member since 2015

Rodrigo Orrantia is an art historian and curator who specialises in photography and the moving image. His primary research interest concerns photography as an expanding field, as it connects with printmaking, film, sculpture, text, sound and localised performance. Since graduating from the Historical and Contemporary Photography MA at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London, he has developed exhibition programmes with national and international artists, more recently Essence of Place, a group show of three generations of Latin American artists working with photography, identity and place, for Mummery+Schnelle Gallery in London. He has art-directed and coordinated exhibitions for major museums and galleries in the United Kingdom, including the National Media Museum, Manchester Museum of Science and Industry, and the Science Museum in London.

During his career, Orrantia has developed a keen interest in the governance and development of art institutions. In 2010 he worked on the Young Professionals in Arts Boards programme Arts & Business in London, and in 2012 attended the Clore Leadership Programme, focusing on funding and strategic development for cultural institutions and projects. His relationship with Iniva spans more than five years, with a close relation to many of their past curators and directors, through researched-based work at the Stuart Hall Library for his Masters degree and curatorial projects.

Adam Epstein Member since 2016

Adam Epstein works at leading international law firm Mishcon de Reya LLP, where he has been a partner since 2000.

He leads Mishcon’s highly regarded practice defending clients against the financial services regulatory bodies. For some 25 years, Adam has defended some of the biggest enforcement cases to emerge. He also leads the firm’s professional discipline practice, advising professionals who are facing challenge or investigation by regulatory or enforcement bodies. He has extensive experience in front of Courts and tribunals, and is widely recognised in the legal directories as a leading individual in his field.

Adam has a strong sense of communal responsibility, and spent a number of years as a governor of his local comprehensive school. He has a keen interest in the arts in general and on contemporary visual arts in particular.

Rebecca Sinker Member since 2017

Dr Rebecca Sinker has worked at Tate since 2006, first heading Young People’s Programmes and now as Convenor: Digital Learning, initiating and managing creative digital learning practice and research. From 1998-2003, she was research fellow at Iniva and Middlesex University, where she completed her PhD (2007) exploring early net.art as a model for creative and critical education online. An artist and educational researcher since 1990, Rebecca has produced digital resources, films, exhibitions, books and participatory projects with all age-groups, in collaboration with organisations including The Photographer’s Gallery, The British Library and Arts Council England.

Ije Nwokorie Member since 2017

Ije Nwokorie has just started as a senior director at Apple after over 11 years at Wolff Olins first as a strategy director then MD of the London office and from April 2014 until 2017, CEO of the Group including offices in New York and San Francisco and overseeing a journey that broadened and deepened the client base and kind of issues being tackled. Since graduating with a Masters in Architecture from Columbia University in 1995 he has enjoyed balancing technology, creativity and leadership, subjects about which he writes and tells stories regularly. Ije is a board member of Charity Water and Malaria No More UK.